1. The New Coviewing:Intergenerational Play and Learning for a Digital Age Michael H. Levine The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop screen2screen, Fordham University October 8, 2010
2. Overview About the Cooney Center A brief history of intergenerational play and literacy learning The new coviewing: Joint media engagement Research on joint media engagement What next? Setting an R&D agenda
3. About the Cooney Center Joan Ganz Cooney’s 1966 report to Carnegie Corporation, The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education “How can emerging media help children learn?”
14. A Brief History of Intergenerational Play and Literacy Learning
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17. Research on Television Coviewing Children who coview with their parents enjoy programs more than other children (Salomon, 1977) Sesame Street researchers found that children learn more from the show when parents watch with them But parents must be actively engaged, talking and pointing things out (Wright, St. Peters, & Huston, 1990) To keep parents in the room and engaged, Sesame Street producers included adult humor, music, and celebrities
20. Joint Media Engagement Caregivers can act as guides by establishing joint attention to media features salient for learning This guidance promotes children’s engagement with media in purposeful ways JME extends the notion of coviewing to include newer, interactive forms of media and other learning spaces JME research studies how media content intersects with in-room and in-world interactions and learning (Stevens, Satwicz, & McCarthy, 2008)
23. Intergenerational Play & Learning Games are the most popular digital activity for children ages 2-14, with 85% usage among device users 97% of American teens play computer or video games The average child starts to play computer games at age 6, and cell phone games at age 10 A 9-year-old spends ~55 minutes on a portable or video game console on a typical weekday, over double the amount of time spent by 6-year-olds
31. Intergenerational Play & Learning Game choice Rules of the game Competition Mentoring opportunities Influence of game type Focus of the interaction Mutual engagement
32. Story Visit A traditional paper book (Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone) A sensor-enhanced frame to monitor page each party is viewing Video-conferencing technology Video of Elmo to maintain child’s engagement and support the interaction between the child and grandparent
33. Story Visit - Study Procedure Grandparent and child-parent dyad were in different rooms of the lab, to simulate distance communication Grandparent read the story and parenthelped child follow along Small paper flaps in the grandparent’s book could be lifted to reveal a suggestion for how to engage the child in conversation related to the book content. Whenever Elmo’s thought bubble appeared, the child could touch it to hear a story-relevant comment or question from Elmo.
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35. The quality of call interactions was much higher than in regular phone calls. Children remained highly engaged in the sessions 97% of the time with Story Visit.
39. Challenges to Creating Effective Digital Media Current research efforts are fragmented and lack shared priorities and practices Old models of R&D no longer apply to an evolving, multi-disciplinary field Most current investments in educational technology are spent on hardware and software, rather than on training to effectively use technologies Educational digital media rarely bridges home and school, or spans multiple grades The public dialogue about games is often focused on their negative effects, not their potential
40. Studying Digital Media Solutions Craft studies to investigate potential of digital media to: Engage parents in scaffolding their kids’ learning Personalize early literacy development Promote healthy eating and exercise habits Inspire kids to engage in scientific inquiry Support learners with special needs
41. Advancing Methods to Study JME How do gaming experiences transfer to in-room and in-world learning? (Stevens, Satwicz & McCarthy, 2008) Family as the unit of analysis Transmedia migration Boundary crossing (Barron, 2004)
42. Family as the Unit of Analysis Can video games (re)unite generations?
And began the show on the basis of what both the smartest scholars had to contribute---That’s Gerry Lesser on the left—and what certifiable, but genius crazy people like Jim Henson had to say as well
These are the projects you’ll be talking about, briefly.
Last bullet point aligns with ecological perspectives on learning. Guidance is a key concept here; note that guidance implies co-location. Term “joint media engagement” was coined by our colleagues at the LIFE Center (Stanford, SRI, Northwestern, U. of Washington)
New platforms: Today, it is possible for adults to guide children’s engagement not only with books and TV, but with eBooks, video games, mobile apps, even web searches. [Click once to display all items after book and TV set.]
I will discuss JME in terms of two initiatives that the Cooney Center has been involved in and, as I do so, touch upon how certain formal features of newer media can support literacy learning in these shared experiences.
Re formal features: The book is of the old-fashioned type: touchable, soft (v. hard as in hardware) and even removable from the larger structure. Kids and parents can take the book into bed for bedtime stories, and save on a bookshelf. All the things that make books so adored a part of our childhoods. The parent with child in lap can guide the child’s attention to pictures and words in the book, as can the remote grandparent albeit without the advantage of seeing what the child is looking at.
This is on the OBVIOUS research agenda. Looking at the more linear series of public policy concerns that “digital mediacan help solve”
But METHODOLOGICALLY, this is how we should gain sustainable insights on situated learning: that is when, where, and for whom gamed-based solutions might work. This is not quite so obvious. How learning moves across the new digital ecological framework?
[Click to show how TV tells kids to go check something out on the computer, and then website tells them to buy the video game or download the mobile phone app. Click SLOWLY to see each set build in, one after another.]SpongeBobbook at upper-right is new: this is to illustrate how ideally, developers would think to bring in good old fashioned books into the media cycle.It might be worth noting here (when picture of book appears) that according to a study of 1000 kids ages 6-17 conducted by Scholastic (released Sept 2010):Reading for fun declines as kids grow up and spend more time online and on mobile phones57 percent of kids (age 9 to 17) say they are interested in reading an eBookA third of children in that same age range say they would read more books for fun if they had access to e-books on an electronic device
Click once to see Elmo on mobile appear in school-afterschool-home ecology
Finally as we think about how to create a new R and D effort we have new tools to gain great ideas: at JGCC we are big fans of research design competitions and rapid prototyping. We want to build the field: Two new programs to incent game development in research labs and in industry R and D.
